The LispOS Project: a position paper, part 2

[Kelly Murray]

> Speaking of Kelly, certainly his SilkOS represents another approach we could
> take.  But he hasn't given many details about his project -- at least not
> since I've been here -- so I can't form much of an opinion about it, and as I
> say, I don't necessarily want to wait for it.  He seems like the sort who
> prefers coding to talking, which I can appreciate, but in the present
> circumstance I think a bit more talking might serve his cause better.

I've already talked quite a bit.  I believe I've summarized what I'm
doing and my position.  I see no point in discussing the details if
there isn't any agreement on the basic approach first.

I've tried to switch the discussion onto the application layer,
which is ultimately what will make this Lisp thing useful,
and where people can actually start contributing to the effort today.
This is something that is needed no matter 
which lower level system is used, either SilkOS, SchemeOS, PToM,
or whatever.  There is lots of code that must be written in Lisp
that doesn't exist today.
gzip is a very simple example.  Who's going to write it?

If support at this level doesn't happen, the lower level is pointless.

Maybe I missed it, but there was little activity discussing work at
the app layer, and now we're now back to discussing
kernel/hardware issues AGAIN.
It's all wasted breath and bandwidth if we can't agree or
get support for actually writing working programs at the app layer.

Frankly, I'm just about ready to drop off this list altogether
and stop wasting my time reading the mail.

I'm working as my time permits on building a SilkMachine,
and will continue to do so.

As soon as I get the mail system and mailing list system working,
I intend to start my own SilkMachine mailing list and associated
website, that will be run entirely using Lisp, persistence, and the web.
At this point, I'll start "talking" again to get outside support,
and will have actual working code so others can  understand in
concrete terms what needs to be done and where it's all going.

-kelly edward murray